What+is+Creative+Commons

What is Creative Commons...Exactly?
To understand what Creative Commons is exactly, we must first have a clear understanding of what Copyright Law is.

It's possibly safe to assume that many educated people are familiar with the term, "copyright". Providing this assumption is accurate, our Creative Commons Wiki proposes a "dummies definition" of copyright law to set the stage for a discussion and understanding of Creative Commons.

In gist, copyright law secures for the creator such as an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor, musician, fine artist, digital artist, film maker or the like, exclusive rights to control who can make copies, or make works of their original work. The creator has full rights over the work. Many people call copyright, "the Big C" due to the graphic notation of the "C". Simple! Right?

While copyright law may seem straightforward, it is often an amazingly complex area of study in the legal profession with all sorts of exceptions, subtleties, subclauses and international variances for debate. Copyright law does not have any provisions for how the artist allows other people to use their work. Normally you would need to get permission by going through a whole bunch of lawyers.

How did it all change? With the onset of the internet in the 90s and with collaboration of peoples across space and time, a whole new world evolved for the creative author. Now the creative author wanted control over exactly who could use their work, how they wanted to share their work and for how long. Creative authors did not want to be restricted by "The Big C". They did not want to restrict how other people could use their work - and wanted to let other people know immediately how their work could be used.

Hence in 2001, with the support of the Center for the Public Domain (a philanthropic foundation based organization in Durham, North Carolina which is dedicated to the preservation of a healthy and robust public domain) Creative Commons was born. It gives the artist full control over how they decide their creative work can be used. It allows creative co-authorship with people over the internet. It allows you to skip the intermediaries, lawyers, and lets you share your work, on your terms. Now, the Creative Commons brand is governed by a CC brand of creative licences, available free of charge on the creative commons website at www.creativecommons.org.

In learning about Creative Commons, it is important to know that it does not compete with "the Big C", rather, it complements it. Creative Commons allows you, the user, to keep your copyright, but grants you, the user, the permission for the world to use your work with certain rights. The analogy is that if "the Big C" is a red light, then the CC is a green light. If the "the Big C" says no trespassing, CC says please come in. If the "the Big C" says all rights reserved, the CC says, some rights reserved. With the powers of the Internet to find work and to build upon it, CC allows the creator to share, remix and reuse and collaborate with other creative authors...legally.

Now you can reuse other creative author's work without asking permission...because permission has already been granted through the CC licencing.

 In 2002, Creative Commons released the first version of six copyright licenses that could be used by an author – these licenses have been subsequently updated in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

There are six types of Creative Commons licenses: (i) Attribution, (ii) Attribution Share Alike, (iii) Attribution No Derivatives, (iv) Attribution Non-Commercial, (v) Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike, and (vi) Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives.

An ** Attribution License ** should be used // when // you wish to let “others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.” ( [] ). This license provides the most flexibility to people who may use your work.

An ** Attribution Share Alike ** License should be used // when // you wish to let “others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.” ( // ibid // .) This license lets people build upon your material, ensuring that it is passed on based on the original terms and conditions that your work was originally distributed under.

An ** Attribution No Derivatives License ** should be used // when // you wish to let others redistribute your work in commercial and non-commercial formats “as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.” ( // ibid // .)

An ** Attribution Non-Commercial License ** should be used // when // you wish to let others ”remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.” ( // ibid // .)

An ** Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License ** should be used // when // you wish to let others “remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.” ( // ibid // .) This license allows others to “translate, make remixes, and produce new stories” based on your work while ensuring that new material is passed on based on the original terms and conditions that your work was originally distributed under.

An ** Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License ** should be used // when // you wish to let others “download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.” ( // ibid // .) This license is the most restrictive and tends to be used for promotional purposes.